march 6/WALKBIKE

walk: 25 minutes
neighborhood
27 degrees / patches of slippery ice

Where people shoveled yesterday, the path is mostly bare with a few streaks of slippery ice, but where they didn’t it is not. Slabs of thick, untouched snow. The slick spots were the most unwelcome, especially with my tight lower back. Aside from the ice, it was wonderful to be outside. Bright blue sky, chirping birds, warm sun. So warm that I took off my hat.

At one point Scott mentioned how the strip of grass between the sidewalk and road is not called a boulevard everywhere. It’s a regional thing. He couldn’t remember what else it was called and where he heard about it, but I did — at least where he heard about it; I couldn’t remember what else it was called. He heard about it from me, during one of our runs together. I couldn’t remember much else, so I had to look it up. Yep — here it is:

I described a New Yorker article I was reading before we left about forensic linguistics. My description included misplaced apostrophes, devil strips, and Sha Na Na. 

log entry on 8 april 2024

A linguist solved a crime in which someone left ransom notes that read, “Put it [the money] in the green trash kan on the devil strip at the corner 18th and Carlson.” Here’s the important part in the article:

And he knew from his research that the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street—sometimes known as the “tree belt,” “tree lawn,” or “sidewalk buffer”—is called the “devil’s strip” only in Akron, Ohio.

Wow, I’ve amassed a lot of information on this blog. Some of it I always remember, and some of it comes back when my memory is triggered, like today.

bike: 30 minutes
basement

I wanted to move my legs and get my heart rate up today so I biked. Watched part of Fame — the end of freshman year and the beginning of sophmore year. Two scenes I especially recall: 1. when Mrs. Sherwood shames Leroy for not being able to read in class — terrible and 2. when the acting teacher instructs the students to pay attention to the details — chewing, talking — of their life:

I want you to observe yourself doing ordinary everyday things. You’ll be asked to duplicate those here in class. An actor must develop an acute sense memory so concentrate on how you deal with things in your world. How you wash your face or hold your fork or lift your cup or comb your hair. Observe and study your own mechanicalness. See if you can catch yourself in the very act of doing something or saying something. See if your actions and reactions fall into patterns and what those patterns are. And in particular, pay close attention to the physical world. Isolate and concentrate on the details.

from Fame –first year (1980)

I’ve been doing this with my vision for several years now, partly because I’m curious and partly because I think it’s necessary for me to function. To isolate and understand and work around the strange and unexpected ways my eyes work (or don’t work).

I could also imagine using this exercise while running or walking as a way to achieve “extreme presence” (from CAConrad). Focusing on breathing or the lifting of the foot or the swinging of the arms, etc.

It felt good to bike. My back didn’t hurt at all. Only my left knee, a little, which is normal. Maybe I’ll do a week of biking. Could I work my way up to an hour on the bike?

conjunction junction, what’s your function?

In late fall or early winter, I wrote a haunts poem about all that the gorge could hold. I named it And. This morning, I found another poem with that title:

And/ Nicole Sealey (click link for audio)

Withstand pandemonium

and scandalous

nightstands

commanding candlelight

         and

         quicksand

and zinfandel

clandestine landmines

candy handfuls

and contraband

         and

         handmade

commandments

and merchandise

secondhand husbands

philandering

         and

         landless

and vandal

bandwagons slandered

and branded

handwritten reprimands

         and

         meander

on an island

landscaped with chandeliers

abandon handcuffs

standstills

         and

         backhands

notwithstanding

thousands of oleanders

and dandelions

handpicked

         and

         sandalwood

and mandrake

and random demands

the bystander

wanders

         in

         wonderland.

Along with the poem, there was a link to a writing exercise inspired it: Conjunctions/Connections, After Nicole Sealey by Maggie Queeney

  1. Read the poem “And” and listen to it several times. Jot down some notes.
  2. Pick a conjunction other than and — or, but, for, nor, yet, so. Make a list of words that contain your chosen conjunction.
  3. Turn your list of words into a poem. “Keep the sound of the word in the air as long as possible through rhyme and repetition.”

I think I’ll choose “or.” When I was writing my and poem in November, I told Scott about it on one of our runs. He mentioned how “and” and “or” work in his coding of web databases:

A mile later, Scott described how you code and in css (where and means both this and that must exist to make a statement true) and how you code or(where or means either this or that can exist to make a statement true). I was fascinated by how and was restrictive and narrowing in the code while orwas expansive. In my poem, I’m understanding and as generous and open and allowing for more possibilities not less. I told Scott that I might need to write an or poem now. And is accumulation, more layers while or is a stripping down. 

And = all these things can be true, and moreOr = at any give time, any one of these things could be true

log entry on 24 nov 2024

There’s also a great “or” poem in this entry.

feb 28/WALKBIKERUN

am walk: 20 minutes
neighborhood
wind: 20 mph / 42 mph gusts

Sitting at my desk in the front room before heading out for a walk, I could hear the wind howling. I wrote in my Plague Notebook, Vol. 24, the wind purpled the sky. Later, walking with Scott and Delia, feeling and hearing and seeing the wind, I said it again and explained it to Scott: the blustery wind, like someone mad and full of bluster, their face turning purple with outrage. I had been planning to try running outside today, but after being pushed around by the wind, I decided I’d prefer to be in the basement.

My favorite things about the wind: the way it swirled the leaves on the sidewalk; turning the corner and feeling the wind on my back, seeing the leaves flying ahead of me.

bike: 30 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
basement

Watched part of S2: episode 1 of Sprint on Netflix while I biked. I’m so glad I put on the audio descriptions! I could never read the big block text they used for identifying people and locations. It’s pretty good, even though they’re using a worn storyline: rival sprinters, one is flashy and talks a lot, the other is quiet and avoids the spotlight.

Listened to a running podcast for the first 10 minutes, then an energy playlist for the rest. I didn’t want to do much in case my back or hips flared up. They both seem fine — not completely pain free, but not painful either. It felt good to get my heart rate up for the first time since Saturday.

Writing this part of the entry at 11:45 am, it’s even windier with 47 mph gusts! Very glad I didn’t go outside to run!

the purple hour

The final purple hour. I’ve enjoyed devoting time to this color. Today’s goal: to write some lines inspired by my exploration.*

2:06 am / dining room

  • thick, heavy stillness
  • the clicking keys echoing in the silence
  • a soft, high ringing in my ears
  • bouncing my legs vigorously
  • “lavender gray: a widow’s shroud” from The Nomenclature of Color/ Richard Jones
  • lavender is the new gray

rituals/ceremonies for each of my main colors? see CA Conrad on red

2 shadows, cast on the closed curtain, light source: a neighbor’s security light
shadow 1 = a thick smear of bird poop on the glass turned into a small form on the curtain
shadow 2 = the thin branches of the serviceberry bush, shimmering in the wind, thin shadows vibrate on the curtain

The wild/ing in this girl is purple, I think, A deep and dark purple.

Wilding/ Shara McCallum

Machetazo!, Bony Ramírez & Blonde Dreams, Alison Saar

you can take the girl out of the wilderness
you can strand her bewilder her for a time
you can even hang her upside down
in your rickety attempt to shake loose
the source of her power but you won’t ever
disentangle the wilding from her
the force of a thousand suns unfurling
and hurling her toward the ground
you won’t be able to erase the traces
of salt lacing her ravenous dreams
oh you can try unwebbing her feet
but the lizard in her will keep sunning
itself as the day is long and at nightfall
will crawl up your walls lurking
at the corners of your vision
goading you on while she thwarts
your every endeavor abandoning
her tail anything required of her
to keep eluding your capture

*Here’s a first draft of something about purple:

Purple Things

a wind-stirred sky / the space between your eye and the object you’re looking at / agitation / the light from a full moon filtered through the blinds / the square shadow it casts on the carpet / deep inside the beat a thought a dream / darkened doorways / a bruise / mold / mist / a sunset after a volcano / a fashion craze / a widow’s shroud / fibs / a house, settling / the beginning / the end / interiors / oxygen-starved extremities / ornamental grass / asters / tantrums / restlessness / the buzz beneath / impending thunderstorms / ink / iodine / inheritance: a mother’s jacket, a daughter’s despair / fake fruit flavor / static / the only color I see when I wake up in the middle of the night

feb 27/WALK

am: 25 minutes
neighborhood
40 degrees

One more day to rest my back. It only feels a little sore, so I think it’s okay, but I’m trying to be cautious. This is the longest break (5 days) I’ve taken in a year? I’m not sure. Another morning walk with Scott and Delia. Sunny and spring-like. All the snow has melted, almost all of the puddles have evaporated.

Picked up a new pair of Brooks’ Ghosts in the early afternoon. I’ll save them for after late April/early May, once sloppy season is done . Black with white and gray. On my walk I wore my bright yellow Saucony’s — the ones that hurt my feet last year. I’m going to give them another chance. Maybe they’ll work this time?! Forgive me, future Sara.

the purple hour

No purple hour last night. I slept straight through, only waking up briefly at 5:30 when Delia jumped on the bed. This sleeping straight through only happens a couple times a month.

In non-purple hour purple thoughts, yesterday afternoon I finished listening to/reading along with JJJJJerome Ellis’ Aster of Ceremonies. So good! The connection to purple is: purple asters, a big chunk of the book is printed in purple ink, I envision the Stutter/pause as purple. Here are some passages I want to remember:

Dr. Bejoian, a speech therapist I worked with from 2012-2013, taught me a technique called soft contact. “If you’re struggling to say a word that starts with p, b, or m, try starting the word as softly as possible.,” she said. Sometimes this made the syllable hard to hear. “Pause” could sound like “awes”; “brain” like “rain”; “master” like “Aster.” I want to follow this softness offered by the Stutter. Thank you, Dr. Bejoian.

For most of my life, my relationship to my stutter was rooted in shame, anger, and despair. I responded to these emotions by trying, and failing, to master my stutter through various means: undergoing hypnosis; making a fist while I stuttered, opening the first to release the work; talking in singsong; expanding my diaphragm while speaking; saying my name is “John”(my middle name) or “Shawn.” Failure has led me to a grove of unknowing. If I can’t master the Stutter, what can I do? What might it mean to try to Aster my stutter?

Aster of Ceremonies (123) / JJJJJerome Ellis

Follow the softness. I love this idea and generosity (to Self and Stutter) it offers. My vision gives softness too, not in sound, but in image. Things that are never in sharp focus are never harsh or exact, but fuzzy and gentle.

Teach me to Aster You. Teach me to treat You as an Elder that has so much to teach me. I will surrender and attend to Your ensemble of blossoms. Your Dandelion Clock* will be my timekeeper. I will seek not to overcome You but to come with You; not to pray to be rid of You, but to pray for your continued presence in my life. To stay with the mystery You steward.

What might it mean to Aster You? To pray that You Aster me? Instead of “I speak with a stutter,” what if I “advertised” to someone by saying: “I speak with an Aster. My speech is home to a hundred blooms. These silences you may hear hold more than I could ever know. Thank you for your patience as I pause to admire their beauty.”

Aster of Ceremonies (124) / JJJJJerome Ellis

I was incredibly lucky to find, a few years into my diagnosis, Georgina Kleege’s book, Sight Unseen. Her generous approach to her own central vision loss — including not understanding it to be a death sentence and giving attention to how her seeing works and to challenging assumptions about the infallibility of vision — helped me to be curious about how seeing works and to develop my own relationship with both being without seeing and seeing in new ways. Even as I struggle with not being able to see that well, I also welcome the new knowledge my strange seeing/ not-seeing is giving me. I imagine Ellis’s “astering the Stutter” to share some similarities.

Ellis connects their Stutter to the Aster and to the many plants (he names them Elders) that their ancestors relied on. They feel a strong connection to these Elders. Such a powerful idea to bring all of this things — ancestors, plants, a glottal Stutter — together. Wow! Inspired by this approach, I’m thinking about how I experience my central vision loss in relation/beside the gorge and the eroding rocks and relentless, remembering river. What ceremonies could I create to honor the different layers of rock? The seeps and springs and floodplains? How does the wearing away of stone, the persistence of water, and my eroding cone cells open a door to a new space in which to dwell to explore to learn from? ooo — I like this idea. I want to give a little more time to thinking through how Ellis makes their connections, and how I can make mine.

feb 26/WALK (x2)

am: 20 minutes
neighborhood
45 degrees

Sun! Birds! Puddles and earthy smells.

pm: 45 minutes
cooper school / 7 oaks / edmund
51 degrees

More sun and birds and warm air. Lots of people and dogs also walking, runners too. A woman running in bright pink shorts. A woodpecker softly knocking, or knocking loudly but at a distance. A biker whizzing by then turning into an alley in front of us. A man coughing thickly. We talked about our kids and their futures, a possible spring break trip, Scott’s plug-in, the Brooks Ghost 16s I’m thinking of buying with our REI refund.

My back is feeling better, but is still sore. I probably won’t run again tomorrow. Maybe I’ll bike on the bike stand?

excerpts from Indigo Insomnia/ Monica Ong

Indigo insomnia is the great waking, this birthing of the world anew. From the indigo, an even deeper blue, is it said.

This line reminds me of a Maggie Smith poem, How Dark the Beginning:

We talk so much of light, please
let me speak on behalf 
of the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark 
the beginning of a day is.

. . .The mouth holds many things except the language of the new, still forming between the lungs. The spoken vow we breathe, but don’t yet know how to defend.

. . .Wondering if your voice is in the wrong chord, the wrong song, the wrong language, or just a painting of the ocean, its roar muted by a gilded gaze that see but doesn’t listen.

Indigo insomnia is diving into the deepest waters of memory to uncover the bodies hidden by our bad inheritance.

Thinking about traumas we inherit, despite others’ best intentions. I was pregnant with RJP when I learned my mom was dying. What impact did my overwhelming grief have on RJP and her mental health?

Reading about indigo in On Color, here’s something I’d like to remember about the difference between dyes and pigments:

Technically, a dye is a coloring agent that bonds with the molecules of the material to be colored. Pigments are also coloring agents, but they differ from dyes in that they don’t bond with the material; they are small particles of color held in some suspension, forming a film that attaches itself to the surface of the substance to be colored. Pigments, one might say, are applied to materials; dyes are absorbed by them.

On Color / David Kastan

Another important thing to remember:

. . . the slaves who worked on the indigo plantations in the Americas really were dying. A soldier who had served under George Washington in the Revolution afterward wrote about the “effects of the indigo upon the lungs of laborers, that they never live over seven years.”

Nonetheless, the worldwide desire for the remarkable blue dye allowed indigo plantations to thrive anywhere the conditions of climate and soil permitted indigo-­bearing plants to grow. In the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies the plantations of the New World satisfied most of the world’s desire for natural indigo.

feb 25/WALK (x2)

25 minutes
neighborhood
37 degrees
morning

Sun and no wind and barely any snow + chirping birds + barely iced puddles + mud and grit = the feeling of spring. I’m excited for warmer weather, although I’m also disappointed we didn’t get more snow. I suppose we still have March and April for that.

Walked with Scott and Delia. Scott and I talked a little about the U.S. and politics and how getting outside makes it a little (just enough) easier to endure all of this terribleness.

10 Things

  1. a black standard poodle stopped in the road, its human patiently waiting for it to move
  2. boulevards that are more mud than grass
  3. a thin, almost invisible sheen of ice on the shaded side of the sidewalk
  4. noticed for the first time, even though we’ve walked past them dozens of times: a kid’s footprints embedded in a stretch of old sidewalk
  5. chirp chirp
  6. the warm sun on my face
  7. near the end of the block: someone repairing or adding to a front porch
  8. heading south: a cool breeze
  9. blue sky
  10. the alley: mud, grit, puddles, ice

70 minutes
to the library and back
45 degrees
afternoon

Another chance to be outside! A wonderful afternoon for a walk. Sun, no wind, clear paths. Books to pick up at the library: Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color and Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. Noticed a dark bluish purple fence that clashed with a dark blue house and a house painted plum.

the purple hour

I did wake up a few times last night, but I didn’t take any notes about it. This morning, I’m finishing the violet chapter in On Color.

What color are the haystacks really? What color is the cathedral at Rouen? Monet’s answer is that the haystacks and cathedral are the color (or colors) they seem to be at the moment of looking (147).

“ocular realism” = a commitment to the illusionistic rendering, not of the world, but of visual experience (147).

1:30 pm / neighborhood walk

As I walked to the library and then back from it, I tried to think about violet and purple and images the evoke my feelings of restlessness and uncertainty and not-quite-formed. A hummingbird, mid-air — moving too fast to see the motion, or a spinning top, constantly whirring but looking solid and still. Carbonated water, something fizzy and bubbling — small little bouncing balls or shimmering bubbles. An insistent, soft whisper. Soft, unstable.

feb 24/WALK

25 minutes with Delia
to the Winchell Trail
53! degrees

No running today; I’m being careful with my sore/stiff lower back. Thought I’d be taking a longer walk in the warm weather with Delia, but I made the bad decision to go to the Winchell Trail. Even though I tried to be very careful on the thawing hill, I slipped and SPLAT! fell flat on my butt into gooey mud. The butt of my jeans, the back of my coat, and my hands were caked in mud. I’m lucky I didn’t hurt myself. Whew! The worst part of it was the 10 minute walk of shame through the neighborhood back to my house with my muddy butt.

the purple hour

3 am / bedroom

A quick look at my iPad. When I turned it off and put it down, an afterimage: a bright rectangle, then all darkness. It took more than a minute for the lavender light to return. As I waited, I recited “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.” The light gray blanket on the couch glowed a pale violet which I mistook for a square of light until I touched it and felt the blanket. If dark cast on the light is a shadow, what is the word for light cast on the dark?

Reminded of a poem I gathered and its description of light cast on the dark:

Good-Night/ Seamus Heaney

A latch lifting, an edged den of light
Opens across the yard. Out of the low door
They stoop in the honeyed corridor,
Then walk straight through the wall of the dark.

A puddle, cobble-stones, jambs and doorstep
Are set steady in a block of brightness.
Till she strides in again beyond her shadows
And cancels everything behind her.

Now I’m thinking of ED’s a long, long yellow on the lawn
The light in my bedroom had a pale and cold ghostly glow, not a warm one — no color. 


a pool of light? a stream of light? what are some other words to describe light in a dark room?

4:34 pm / front room

violet — On Color/David Scott Kastan

Yesterday, reading an essay about periwinkle, I discovered On Color by David Scott Kastan. My local library doesn’t have it, but RJP’s college does. Hooray! I was able to download the entire book! Currently I’m reading the chapter on violet. Here are a few passages I’d like to remember:

An exasperated French novelist, Joris-­ Karl Huysmans, complained that “earth, sky, water, flesh” were inevitably now the color of “lilacs and eggplants” (141).

Lilacs and eggplants. That’s what light and dark look like to me in the bedroom in the middle of the night. That also seems like a great name for a poem.

Landscape became the characteristic genre of the impressionists, but their interest was not, as with earlier landscape painters, in recreating the particularities of its geological, agricultural, or architectural features. They wanted, it was said, to recreate the immediate visual impression of that landscape, produced by the light in the very instant before the brain fully organized the scene (144-145).

Can my brain every fully organize the scene? Sometimes it/I get stuck and a landscape doesn’t make sense.

It isn’t that they painted objects as we see them. They painted the luminous air and light that exists in between the eye and those objects (145).

I’m fascinated by this in-between space and all that happens in it. Here I’m thinking about Alice Oswald and her invoking of Dante and the spiriti visivi — light as insects traveling to object to collect the color like pollen and then deliver them to us.

I’m roughly halfway done with the chapter, but I’ll stop here for now.

back pain

Looking up lower back pain I’m happy to report that it’s most likely only a weak core/overuse issue. Time to do some “gentle moving” — walking, stretching — for a few days. I’m cool with that. This article recommends dead bugs, planks, side planks, glute bridges, and child poses. Also: a heating pad.

feb 23/WALK

1.5 miles
neighborhood, with Delia-the-dog
38 degrees

Ahh! Sun, above freezing, no wind! Birds! Melting snow! The promise of spring! I’m taking a break from running today because I’ve run 5 days in a row and my lower back is tight and slightly sore. Also, I wanted to make sure that Delia got a proper walk today. It’s difficult to balance walking her and running. And, when it was so cold last week, she didn’t want to go out that often.

Lots of walkers and dogs out on the sidewalks. Overheard: 2 women walking in the street — one to the other, isn’t that cute! aww . . . poor thing. Poor thing? Were they talking about Delia in her cute orange letterman’s sweater? If so, why did they say, poor thing? Did I miss something when I put her harness on?

10 Things

  1. blue, cloudless sky, only a few birds and branches in it
  2. drip drip drip — one gutter
  3. gussssshhhhhh — another gutter
  4. a steady stream of cars on the river road
  5. a steady stream of runners on the trail
  6. one runner in shorts, their bare white legs glowing in the sun
  7. soft snow on the grassy boulevard, no sharp snaps from my striking feet as we walked, avoiding the voices and a clanging collar behind us on the sidewalk
  8. the faint knocking of a woodpecker
  9. a view of the river through the bare trees from above on edmund: all white, looking less like water and more like field
  10. that sun! stopping to let Delia sniff, feeling the warmth on my face — flashes of memory from other warm winter days

the purple hour

2:30 am / bedroom

light coming in through the ineffective blinds, casting purple — lavender carpet and walls, indigo couch and closet interior

8:45 am / dining room

Trying to determine which tint of purple the carpet was, I encountered periwinkle.

Periwinkle is a color. . .

A subset of violet, which is a subset of purple, periwinkle denotes a precise shade that appears somewhat brighter than lavender, bluer than lilac, clearer than mauve, and dimmer than amethyst. But it’s hard to say with precision, because the purples are strange ones, polarizing, and violets are even more so. Few hues are more beguiling and more reviled than this grouping, the last stop on the rainbow and the tacked-on v at the end of that schoolchild’s mnemonic, Roy G. Biv. According to the scholar David Scott Kastan, shades of violet exist within their own special category. Violet is, like glaucous, a color-word that denotes a certain quality of light. “Violet seems to differ from purple in whatever language—not so much as a different shade of color than as something more luminous: perhaps a purple lit from within,” Kastan writes in On Color, his 2018 book on the subject. “Violet is the shimmering, fugitive color of the sky at sunset, purple the assertive substantial color of imperial robes.”

Periwinkle: the color of poison, Modernism, and dusk

a window of time . . .

But lately, I’ve found myself waiting for the sun to go down, timing my walks so that I can be outside then, when the bats begin to swoop around the oaks and the mosquitoes hum around my face. It’s not the golden hour (which occurs about an hour before the sun touches the horizon), it’s the periwinkle window. It lasts only a few minutes in the summertime; dusk descends fast in the north. But for fifteen minutes, the sky is painted with various shades of violet, indigo, and mauve. At dawn and dusk, my tiny little dead-end road becomes another place, quieter than during the daylight hours, but visually much louder.

Periwinkle: the color of poison, Modernism, and dusk

…a flower (vinca minor)

The species is commonly grown as a groundcover in temperate gardens for its evergreen foliage, spring and summer flowers, ease of culture, and dense habit that smothers most weeds. It was once commonly planted in cemeteries in parts of the Southern U.S. and naturalized periwinkle may indicate the presence of graves whose other markers have disappeared.

source

from Hymn to Life/ James Schuyler

Everyday, in every room a shawl tossed untidily upon a chair or bed
Created no illusion of lived-in-ness. But the periwinkles do, in beds
That flatten and are starred blue-violet, a retiring flower loved,
It would seem, of the dead, so often found where they congregate. A
Quote from Aeschylus: I forget. All, all is forgotten gradually and
One wonders if these ideas that seem handed down are truly what they were?
An idea may mutate like a plant, and what was once held basic truth
Become an idle thought. like, “Shall we plant some periwinkles there
By that bush? They’re so to be depended on.”


…a snail/whelk

Littorina littorea is known as the Common Periwinkle. It is native to Europe from the White Sea, Russia to Gibraltar. It has been introduced to the West and East coasts of North America and the Mediterranean. Some introduced occurrences have failed to establish sustained populations, but others have persisted, especially on the East Coast from Newfoundland to Virginia. This snail is characteristic of intertidal rocky shores, wharves, and pilings, but also occurs in mudflats and marsh habitats. It is a common food item in Europe, but is rarely eaten in North America. It is highly abundant in parts of its introduced range and has had impacts on food webs, through competition with native species and increased grazing which reduces seaweed abundance. It is also host to a variety of parasite species.

source

I first encountered periwinkle-as-snail in a poem by James Merrill:

from Periwinkles/ James Merrill

You have seen at low tide on the rocky shore
How everything around you sparkles, or
Is made to when you think what went before.

Much of this blaze, that’s mental, seems to come
From a pool among the creviced rocks, a slum
For the archaic periwinkle.

jan 11/WALKYOGA

walk – 30 minutes
neighborhood
26 degrees

Winter white. White sky, white grass, white sidewalks — at least some of the sidewalks are still white. Warmer. Still, quiet, calm. Deep breaths — ahhh! cold air! A happy dog. Walked past 7 Oaks and thought about how it’s a sinkhole. then wondered how long it’s been this way. “Thousands of years” was as specific as I could get. While looking for its age, I also found a Sinkhole Study from a few years ago. I’ll have to look through it when I have more time.

yoga – 30 minutes

Two days ago, I promised to try out a low vision yoga video. Loved it!

The slow and careful way that the instructor described the movements was very helpful. Similar to audio descriptions on shows and movies, I didn’t realize how much I needed a description of the moves until I had one and could feel the difference — easier, less stressful.

grass

This morning, during my “On This Day” practice, I re-encountered these lines from Victoria Chang in her poem, “Left Behind”:

We are carriers
of grass yet to be grown. We
aren’t made of cells, but of fields.

Then, while reading JJJJJerome Ellis’ “Benediction” in Asters of Ceremony, I encountered these beautiful lines,

The more I live with my stutter, with the Stutter that I steward in my body, the more I feel and know, or unknow, that this stutter is no less a part of the earth than the rest of my body. This stutter has come from the land and the water. It knows the Plant Elders, and there is much I can learn, and have learned, about my stutter by spending time with these Elders. Names run through the Grasses, and when I stutter on my name, I am brought into the field.

Benediction from Asters of Ceremony/ JJJJJerome Ellis

Both Chang and Ellis, but especially Chang, reminded me of Mary Oliver’s mention of grass in The Leaf and the Cloud:

Listen, I don’t think we’re going to rise
in gauze and halos.
Maybe as grass, and slowly,
Maybe as the long-leaved, beautiful grass.

jan 9/YOGAWALK

hip/lower back yoga – 20 minutes

I tried out a new yoga routine this morning for hips and lower back release. I liked it (mostly), but it was difficult to follow; I couldn’t see the movements she was making very easily. I’m sure some of it was because I wasn’t familiar with the movements, but I also think it was her (visually) busy set-up. Of, maybe it’s the dark floor? Yes, there’s not enough contrast with the floor and I couldn’t see what her body is doing.

yoga / difficult to see

The yoga routine I usually do has a light/white floor so I can the yoga instructor’s arms and legs more easily — at least where her arms and back are bare:

yoga / easier to see

It’s possible that I could see the second yoga instructor more easily because I’ve watched this video hundred of times and I started watching ir when my vision was better than it is now.

I decided to look up “low vision accessible yoga” on YouTube. I found, Yoga For People with Low Vision, which I think I’ll try tomorrow. There’s not enough contrast (for me) between the instructor and the mat, but I imagine the emphasis on describing the movements might help. Thinking more about why it was more difficult for me to follow in the first video, I’m remembering how chatty the instructor was about random stuff. Some moments she offered great descriptions of the movements, but other moments she went too fast or spent more time talking about something else. In my favorite yoga video, there’s no chatting. Just a clear, straight-forward, rehearsed voice-over.

I found a video with advice on how to instruct blind or low vision yoga students, and I found this part about intentionality particularly important:

Yes! Intentionality, mind-body connections, listening — and not just for the students with low vision.

walk with Delia – 20 minutes
neighborhood
20 degrees

Scott and I took Delia on a walk around 2 blocks. Brrr!! It felt colder than 20 degrees. Was it sunny? Now I can’t remember. Wait, it was, I wore my sunglasses. The thing I remember most about the walk were the talkative birds in a neighbor’s bush. I think they were sparrows? I didn’t see them, but I sure heard them! Another thing I remembered were the bare branches of the trees — gnarled and sprawled and looking straight out of a dark fairy tale.

Memory and Forgetting

I came across a Radiolab episode from last spring on memory and forgetting. The first section was particularly great.

SCIENTIST: On a literal level it’s an act of creation.

SCIENTIST: Yeah, exactly.

SCIENTIST: We’re reconstructing those memories.

SCIENTIST: Construction.

JAD: Maybe it’s more like painting or sculpture.

SCIENTIST: Everyone’s constantly their own artist.

SCIENTIST: We take bits and pieces of experience.

SCIENTIST: Some things get sharpened, other things leveled.

SCIENTIST: And infused with imagination and …

SCIENTIST: Out of that construct …

SCIENTIST: Construct. Construct.

*

A memory is a structure that connects one brain cell to another.

Associations! Another thing that creates connections and associations: metaphor

JONAH LEHRER: That the act of remembering on a literal level, it’s an act of creation. Every memory is rebuilt anew every time you remember it.

jan 7/YOGARUN

yoga, 30 minutes
walk, 20 minutes
neighborhood
18 degrees

The same 30 minute yoga for flexibility routine I’ve been doing for 5 years. I like it, but I should try something else this month. Later, a short walk outside with Delia the dog. Brisk.

10 Things

  1. faint shadows, mine, tall, beside Delia’s, short
  2. the metallic buzz of a table saw
  3. a ridge of snow, refusing to melt on a neighbor’s narrow boulevard
  4. the fast flash of Delia’s tail when she’s excited or relieved or happy to be heading back
  5. cold air seeping through my hood and hat, into my ears
  6. bare grass
  7. the 6 inch gap under the gate of a yard a block away
  8. the smooth asphalt of a nearby driveway
  9. the sculpture of a turtle — bigger than an ancient tortoise — in a front yard — it looks heavy, is it made out of bronze?
  10. the buzz of workers all around the neighborhood — brrr!

forgetting/remembering

1 — the body

On jan 7, 2019, I wrote this about forgetting and remembering my body as I ran:

I found myself worrying constantly about my back or my IT band or my knee. At one point I wondered, what would it feel like to not notice my body? To simply run? Of course, this did happen many times during the run, but I remember more the times when I was too aware of my body. 

running log, 7 jan 2019

2 — never forget

Scrolling through facebook this morning, I encountered several “never forget” posts about the pro-Trump terrorist attack on congress on Jan 6, 2021. Then I read my On this Day post from jan 7, 2021 which begins with a brief description of the attack. I thought about how I use this log and my “on this day” practice to not forget things (typing this, I started wondering about the differences between not forgetting and remembering). Not forgetting is an important act of resistance.

I also read my jan 7, 2020 entry about the dogs in our neighborhood. Most of those dogs are gone now. Or, if they’re not gone, I don’t ever see them anymore. But, I remember them often as we walk past their houses. Delia does too. Not forgetting is an important ritual of staying connected to a place.

Simply looking. A car goes over a rise and there are birches snow
Twisted into cabalistic shapes: The Devil’s Notch; or Smuggler’s
Gap. At the time you could not have imagined the time when you
Would forget the name, as apparent and there as your own.

(from Hymn to Life/James Schuyler)

As I travel around my neighborhood, by foot or car, I speak about things that are no longer there — the tree with teeth, the big branch that sprawled above the road, the mustache on the mustache bridge, Bridgemans restaurant — and reflect on how easy it is to forget things that are no longer there. Without memories, it’s as if it was always like it is now, like the gone things never existed. Speaking of the mustache bridge, FWA mentioned it the other day. He referred to it (the bridge that crosses Hiawatha on the parkway) as the mustache bridge even though it only had a spray-painted mustache on it for a few months 10 years ago. I thought it was fascinating that this name has stuck. Will there be a time when we forget why we call it that?

3 — losing

I watch other bodies slip through the blue,
how fast the young are
& how old they become, floating, floating,
forgetting the weight of years
(Romance/Susan Browne)

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
(One Art/Elizabeth Bishop)